Bio

Now that our temperatures are staying in the upper 80's to lower 90's and the nights are in the lower to mid 70's, the plants are beginning to show the stress. At this time of year watering is critical. We have started this year to place soaker hoses on our beds and it sure has helped the plants to survive the extreme heat.

Everything is looking real good right now. The watermelons are well on their way to maturity. We planted Black Diamond (my favorite) Dixie Queen and Sweet Caroline melons. We also planted our standby cantaloupes. The Cantaloupes are really getting large. The Okra is starting to blossom, and we are harvesting Blackeye, pinkeye purplehull and cream peas. The corn is set to be harvested next week and we have to slaughter about 50 chickens to put in the freezer. The Cherry tomatoes are loaded with tomatoes, and the Better Boy, Big Boy, and Early Girl tomatoes are starting to turn red. We harvested several pecks of Jalapeno peppers and have put up a years supply of cucumber pickles. So if my writing is a little haphazard please forgive me.

Sometimes there is just not enough hours in the week to do everything we would like to. That is the joy of operating your own farm. We are also in the planning stages of marketing our products in another trade days fair once per month. So for that new endeavor we planted several rows of winter squash and pumpkins. Since these vegetables take so much room to mature, we opted to plant them in traditional rows instead of in beds like the other produce. If all goes well, the year will end with us showing a pretty good profit from our farming operations.

We have also changed the name of our operation to T-N-T Farm. This better reflects our farm since it is now owned by my brother and me. Here is a chicken tip. Throw all of your green scraps to your chickens. They love the greens and it cleans up the place. Also they compost these greens so you can use them on your next garden.

Happy gardening

Byron Tumlinson

T-N-T Farm